The pharmaceutical packaging industry offers a wide array of dispensers and containers for all types of medications. These packages include conventional pill vials, as well as the now popular blister cards. The present prescription vial, however, offers no checks to either remind a patient of when to take the medicine, or whether the medication has in fact been taken. In those cases where a patient is on multiple medications, a number of different vials only serves to confuse a patient.
Recently, blister cards have overcome a number of the shortcomings of prescription vials and become increasingly popular. Exemplary patents discussing various advantages of blister packaging include the following: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,429,792; 4,125,190; 3,856,144; and 3,780,856. Most of the blister packages of this type require specialized packaging machinery for assembly. Thus, such packages have the serious economic drawback that they are difficult and expensive to manufacture on a small or customized scale. The primary drawbacks with the prior art blister packages are the sealing material and the methods of sealing the plastic blister sheets to the lidding sheets. Typically, the blister sheets are sealed to the lidding sheets with the use of pressure-sensitive or heat-activated adhesives. The sticky nature of pressure-sensitive adhesives requires that the adhesive be carefully placed on a blister sheet and backing sheet in a specific pattern. The blister sheet and backing sheet are then carefully aligned and registered to seal in any medications. If the registration is not accurate, the adhesive may attach to the medications and possibly spoil the enclosed medications. Further, incomplete or inaccurate registration does not offer a sufficiently hermetic seal. Likewise, heat-activated adhesives require clumsy and inconvenient sealing devices. Further, the heat may have an adverse effect on medications being sealed in the package.